Cowboy Boots and Other Stories

John Sater
Nonfiction, 128 pages, 6" x 9" softcover

ISBN 1-879628-03-1

Northwest native and Bonners Ferry resident John Sater takes readers "back to the present" in rural America in this collection of 44 short essays telling stories from a generation whose mothers went from washboards to washers and whose fathers swore by, and sometimes at, Model A Fords. Cowboy Boots and Other Stories explores common experiences from cleaning chimneys and growing gardens, catching mice and raising pigs, to outsmarting ornery chickens.

In this thoughtful and wry collection of essays, author John Sater takes anything but a sentimental journey back to the "good old days" – which he points out weren't always that good. Sater is interested in just about everything and curious enough to research the smallest mysteries, which leads to entertaining tales about dandelions and animal tracks and woolly bears. And he's willing to espouse a bit of his personal philosophy, whether it be on the work ethic or salesmen or the state of telephone technology these days.

Cowboy Boots and Other Stories may make you years for a disappearing way of life. Above all, these essays will make you look anew at the extraordinary little things that enrich our ordinary lives.

A native of Washington's Snoqualmie Valley, John Sater lives in Bonners Ferry, Idaho. He has been an auctioneer for decades, after stints in the U.S. Army, farming and working in the lumber business. These essays first appeared in the weekly column he wrote for the Kootenai Valley Times in Bonners Ferry.